San Jose, Costa Rica!

*i am re-posting this from my old (broken) blog so that my entire Costa Rica trip is documented on here*

the tile floor in the lobby of Gran Hotel

San Jose was the starting and ending point for our 10 day trip throughout Costa Rica. it is the capital city of the country; similar to other big cities, it is crowded, dirty in some areas and not in others, has lots of great hole-in-the-wall food joints, a plethora of opportunities for people-watching and a universal favorite: one way streets.
We arrived into San Jose just after dinnertime on friday, walked straight off the plane to immigration and then to the rental car place. after getting the car, we drove into the heart of San Jose to find our hotel, Gran Hotel. what ensued was nothing short of a classic ‘tourist’ moment in a foreign city: we had difficulty identifying streets because they didn’t have signs…maps become irrelevant at this point, we were trying to navigate one-way streets blindly while driving around the same 4 blocks probably 10 times, and we were all trying to take it in stride balancing frustration with the hilarity of the situation. it turns out there is no parking near the hotel and we found that out the hard way-ha!
after finally reaching the hotel, we proceeded to do a sneaky maneuver into the room because we had only booked one room for all five of us to save money. it all worked out fine and that night we discovered that nobody snored, which is always a plus!

Gran Hotel

this building is apparently absolutely beautiful on the inside

looking down the street from the hotel

the next morning we left early because we had a 3 hour drive ahead of us to La Fortuna at the base of Arenal Volcano. (more on that to come!)

we also ended our trip in San Jose. we, again, were all in one hotel room and the hotel was not far from the other one, so we were quite confident that we would be able to find it easily. not true. we ended up driving in circles again before getting directions from some guy on the street. we walked downtown to find some food and ended up at a hole-in-the-wall place that gave us so much food for our $$. to be quite honest, i don’t love this type of food establishment (they seem so sketchy and unsanitary) but i was reminded throughout the trip (i haven’t traveled internationally in 6 years!) that these places have the most authentic food and the most bang for your buck.

this is a little park across from our second hotel in San Jose

this is the school that my friend Ana grew up going to! it was so special to be able to see it!

the next morning we had an early flight back to the US and it was 9/11 so we didn’t want to risk anything by cutting it close. our best efforts were thwarted when we got lost in slum after slum after slum neighborhood in San Jose trying to get to the airport. we would have been fine but there was a detour off the highway because of construction and we spiraled into a complete fail of navigational skills because 1) no road signs 2) we had only ever been in San Jose in the dark and 3) the slum neighborhoods are the most complicated labyrinth i’ve ever seen! again, another ‘tourist’ moment and by God’s grace we made it back to the car rental place just in time to hop a quick shuttle to the airport. we made it through security with time to spare and tried to spend the rest of our miscellaneous Colones before leaving the country.